I want to rub this trailer all over me – Amour

Michael Haneke has taught me that I’m a masochist. I love him, and hate him for revealing this self-truth. I can’t help but eagerly absorb anything he puts out, even though that usually leads to an experience where I’m tossed around like a play thing and I inevitably leave it feeling battered and bruised, but grateful. Two years ago, the folks at Cannes seem to have affirmed they are the same as I. Haneke took home the Palm d’Or for The White Ribbon, a film that tests the patience, but ends up rewarding an attentive viewer. While I was a fan of The White Ribbon, I feel it was difficult for many to overcome Haneke’s clinical relationship with the story and its characters because of the absence of his muse, Isabelle Huppert, who seems to humanize even his most brutal of stories (could anyone else have pulled of The Piano Teacher?).

Imagine my delight when Haneke took home the same prize this year for his film, Amour. By his own words, Amour is a film about the ‘indignities of aging.’ As a proper masochist, I both dread and greatly anticipate the return of a Haneke film, one that indeed stars Huppert, and promises to be an emotional roller coaster. The trailer (below) doesn’t reveal much, and I’m glad. For now, I only want to whet my appetite.